A Question For You (?)
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by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Date
More and more, project managers – and project management as a discipline – is focused on benefits realization, on strategically connecting project outcomes to the mission and vision of the company, and yes, since this is a blog on sustainability, considering long-term effects of project decisions, including design and use of the project's product, on the planet and on our communities.
It's what we read in the excellent Pulse of the Profession reports from PMI, it's what we hear at PMI Congresses, it's threaded through stories in PM Network magazine, and it's prevalent in the many project management discussion boards on LinkedIn.
Do you think our discipline is inflating its role in the corporate environment?
I ask this because our book, Green Project Management, which won the Cleland Award for Literature from PMI in 2011, received a book review earlier this year that had some negative comments on the book (which is fine – everyone is entitled to their opinion). We are proud to have the Cleland Award and a ton of positive comments, so we're fine, thank you very much. However, this review didn't stop at the book - it expanded and went on with this statement:
“I suggest that project managers stop inflating their roles in the corporate environment.”
So I am turning the tables in this blog post and rather than writing a large post, I’m instead asking you what you think about this statement, since it goes beyond the book and instead makes a sweeping suggestion about the discipline of project management.
Here are some discussion starters:
- In a project, should the PM keep tight-lipped about design issues?Design is design, implementation is implementation (according to the suggestion). Right?
- If a project manager sees a way to make a project’s outcome more sustainable, they should not say anything, right?The project manager should wait until the full set of requirements are implementable but should not pass any judgment on the product or service, because we are restricted as coordinators and expediters to ‘get-r-done’, right?
- Designs/commitments/contracts should be “thrown over the wall” to the PM and she or he is tasked with getting the commitments met. Right?
- If there are ethical or social issues or decisions being made that may have long-term negative effects or may be just plain-old wrong (e.g. from recent news stories, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, BP) we need to keep our nose to the grindstone, shut up, and churn out project deliverables, because we are project managers - not lawyers, philosophers, environmental engineers, nor ethicists, right? Right?
I’m just wondering what you think here. Can we get a little feedback? Is our project management discipline bloating, expanding, greedily beyond its boundaries as I feel the statement suggests?
Do it! Think this through and post a response! Thanks.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: September 23, 2016 05:38 PM |
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Comments (4)
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 | Anonymous |
I can argue that this statement is true for every functional group within organizations. Functional groups within organizations should support the Vision, Mission and Strategy of the organization and strategically engage its precious resources on Selected Projects. In many cases this “over-expanding” is true for every functional group within the organization. Finance, HR, IT, Software Development, and also Product Management or Engineering are all guilty. Every one of these groups will have a good reason why they are “special”. So yes one could argue that Project Management groups are also guilty. This “over-expanding” is a very common phenomenon but not just for Project Management. In terms of Project Management, PM’s just want things to get done by relying on the delegation of authority the PM receives from the Executive, and/or Project Sponsor, until such time that the PM can walk away from a successful (or not) project and focus on the next project. All projects within any organizations Portfolio should have a justifiable reason to be executed, and if that is “over-expanding” it probably comes from someone guilty of “over-expanding” themselves.
| Anonymous |
Hugo, thanks - very well said. My opinion about this statement is that the person making the statement had a negative experience with particular project management person (or personality) - and then used this to profile all project managers, the project management profession itself.
Any other comments, folks! Hugo took the challenge and excelled - how about you?
| Anonymous |
Yes - as professional project mangers we should stop inflating our importance in the corporate world, after all, what is our roll other than to guide, maintain focus, keep the morale of the team buoyed, maintain the metrics and meet the goals.
We are of little use to a project made up of intelligent engineers, developers, process aware QA and the Business aware BA. A PM - is nothing but an anchor that is holding the project ship from going over the edge - their job is little more than shepherding cats that want little or nothing to do with the rest of the folks in the team.
Our command of communication that allows the flow of information from and to the team, proactive actions that keep the project from failing - listening skills and people skills that we have developed over the span of our career - wasted tools as we only serve to inflate our role in the success or FAILURE of the project.
Samer Alhmdan
Senior Project Manager, PMP, PMI-RMP, LEED AP, EDGE Expert| dar
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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